I'm already an on-line magazine

After spending time testifying before the FEC to try to protect the freedom of speech of bloggers from undo campaign finance regulations, Atrios is following the lead of The Talent Show and shifting to the new "web magazine" format. Atrios' is perplexed as to what entitles Michael Savage, the racist hatemonger, the media exemption, but could deny it to bloggers. Yeah, so am I.

Now, it's an excellent idea and all, but what will become of the blogosphere? What will people do instead of blogging? Will we spend time 'zine-ing? Cuz if you drop the silent "e", it becomes zining, which isn't even pronouced the same and is destined to be a typo on the information superhighway. The ZinoSphere, however, sounds hella cool. I want a condo in the ZinoSphere! And I wanna be onboard when it leaves for Alpha Centauri. Hell yeah!

Certainly, some will choose to attach Journal to the name of their publication, as in such publications as the New England Journal of Medicine. Now, these folks won't be journalling, certainly, as that makes it sound like a diary. While Bob Graham was a fine legislator and continues to be a good radio guest, I doubt his journal of daily activities and dietary notes will make for gripping reading. Luckily, back in the days of blogging, a word was already invented to handle this: journalisming. As in "journalisming is hard work". The usage was ironic, of course, and will be doubly so now. You gotta like double irony.

For my own part, you will note you are reading an article. The Talent Show will be rebranding their content from blog posts to articles in making the transition. No such worries here. The Laboratory has always published articles, even though I deluded myself into going along with this whole crazy blog terminology. I designed my content management system, the LoopyCMS, from the start as a general system for web publishing. I'll have to watch myself when it comes to the possibly misleadingly blog-like nature of the daily headlines section, but since it's simply a section of my online magazine, I think I'm safe. I'll definitely have to make a survey of the members of the ProgBlog Research Center sites, to determine if I'll need to rebrand it the "ProgZine Research Center". Definitely less of a tongue-twister, but it seems to lack a little jenny sequiter. Or whatever that French phrase is.

So I guess the only remaining question is whether I'll have to register the specific nature of the Laboratory's work, as it's quite frankly a hodge-podge mad scientist kind of endeavor. Musical compositions one week, web application the next week, a scanning ray device or quantum manipulator the week after.

Thanks for your attention,

Lane Schwark
aka Dr. Laniac
Publisher and Editor in Chief
Dr. Laniac's Laboratory